Lauruffian, is it going to be a needle biopsy? I had one of those. The thought of it really freaked me out, but the reality was far better. And mine came back with no cancer, which was the best gift of all.
Best of luck in this journey!
Rebecca
[QUOTE=Lauruffian;7131406]
Thanks for the input, everyone. I’m newly diagnosed and have just started medication, and I understand it takes 6 weeks or so for the meds to work. It’s driving me crazy. Friday-Saturday I was insanely fatigued in a way that only compares to the times I’ve been coming out of general anesthesia. Then, once I did lie down, the body aches were just pulsating through me–I felt like I was just humming in dull ache. Not horrible, but just constant. I tried to get up and be functional yesterday–heh, one Big Thing on my to-do list was go get my blood drawn–and every time I tried, I needed an hour nap after. Actually, these aren’t just naps; they’re deep, hard sleeps filled with seriously funky dreams.
Today, I’m still tired, but now I have the rapid pulse rate (resting is around 90-110, depending; sitting here it’s been hovering around 104) and really bad shakes that drive me nuts. I have a dull headache, but not the crippling one I had last week. I’m considering starting the beta blocker the cardiologist gave me for the palpitations, but I’m not sure I want to yet. I just don’t want to keep adding medications.
I figure (hope), as LauraKY and many others of you said, that once we find the right treatment for me this will be no big deal. I just want to feel better–my symptoms have been increasing in both severity and frequency in the last 4 months or so. The last month in particular has made it hard to function.
Since this diagnosis is new, they’re still checking other things. My GP included my rheumatoid factor in the bloodwork drawn yesterday, as well as the TH and free T3 and T4. She also is checking my prolactin levels, which made me scratch my head until I learned she’s checking my pituitary gland function.
Seriously, as I type with jittery fingers, I just want to feel better. Annnnytime now. But now that we have a diagnosis, I know things will be getting much better–there just will be a few bumps in the road along the way. But, as someone told me on the thyroid forum (yes, Schune, that’s me 
), doing nothing is infinitely worse than any bumps in the road I encounter trying to find the right treatment.
I’m frustrated I’m not in the saddle, but I know my boy is young, but not too young (11) and thoroughly trained, so he’ll be okay enjoying the life of leisure for a bit. I’d like to ride today, but only emotionally have the desire to–mentally I’m exhausted, and physically I’m exhausted. So, enjoy your time off Tril. Hopefully I’l be able to get in the saddle at least once a week.[/QUOTE]
It might be more than your thyroid. Have you been thoroughly evaluated for tick borne disease?
[QUOTE=LauraKY;7151851]
It might be more than your thyroid. Have you been thoroughly evaluated for tick borne disease?[/QUOTE]
And heavy metal toxicity or mold poisoning, any one of these things exhibit similar symptoms, be wary of any doctor concentrating on “syndrome” analysis without any more testing.
Sorry not to reply more personally, but thank you everyone for your words, ideas, suggestions, and experiences. I have been reading.
The biopsy freakin’ hurt–I wasn’t expecting that. I think the nodule must be near a nerve ending; I noticed last spring sometimes the left side of my tongue would have near constant pins-and-needles sensation, and it still does in an off again-on again pattern. Well, as she pressed and scraped bits off (gah), despite it being down by my collarbone, I felt pain and pressure under the left side of my tongue. So, huh.
I get the biopsy results next week. I’m not too concerned, really. I just want to hurry up and get to the feeling better part.
I have more energy now, but the body aches are getting worse. They’ve started waking me up at night. My entire body throbs–my hips, upper back, hands, feet, teeth.
Because I had a high rheumatoid factor, I’m being sent to a rheumatologist to see if there isn’t something else going on. It’s high, though not terribly high–23, where normal is 0-13. Still, 23 is high enough for a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, though I seriously doubt that’s it. One thing they want me checked for is fibromyalgia. I’ll ask about heavy metals testing.
So, that’s where I am. My bloodwork shows my thyroid hormones are down to more mid-range normal levels, and I’m waiting for the results of the biopsy. The body aches, fatigue, and palpitations are still regular occurrences, but I am more functional at least.
But I can’t even imagine getting on my horse. 
Wishes for good biopsy results and a better road ahead.
About the body aches… last weekend I got food poisoning and I was sick as a dog for about 48 hours. It was my worst nightmare… I couldn’t keep my meds down. After 24 hours I took my hydrocortisone under my tongue (for my Addison’s disease) but I couldn’t get my T4 or T3 meds down for almost 48 hours. My hips and knees ached like I had run a marathon. As soon as I got back on my meds, the aches faded and now I’m back to normal. Hashimoto’s can cause some bad symptoms, and even if your labs look normal, if you don’t feel well you probably aren’t. If you aren’t properly converting T4 to T3, it becomes Reverse T3 which can skew the labs and make you look normal. When you feel up to it, please do some research on it so you can help the doctors help you.
Hang in there, you’re not alone.
Make sure you’re tested for tick borne diseases.
How did I miss this thread?
First, keeping my fingers crossed for unremarkable biopsy results, Lauruffian.
About a dozen years ago I began feeling great fatigue by the end of the workday and sometimes felt so tired at dinner that I wondered if my face might end up on the plate. I wasn’t gaining weight or having any other symptoms that couldn’t be ascribed to other causes (e.g., muscle tension headaches, a curse since age 15, a bit of situational A&D as I was divorcing my longtime wife.). Just fatigue.
This was not right, so I made an appointment with my then doc, a Duke internist.
Among other things she ran a thyroid panel and my TSH was a little outside what soon thereafter was identified by the AACE as an obsolete and incorrect normal range. (Labcorp to this day still erroneously reports the top end of normal as 5, not 3 as has been recommended for a decade.)
She decided to do nothing and that I should come back in 4 months to be retested. After 4 weeks, I knew that wasn’t going to work out well at all, so I went back. She repeated the thyroid panel and my TSH had increased sharply, so she finally decided to Rx levothyroxine and Dx Hashimoto’s. It took 4 weeks for material relief, and about a year – she left the clinic so I switched docs – for us to raise the starting dosage and keep about right to keep my TSH around 1.5 or 2, etc. Long, long before that, the fatigue was gone.
Although a modest percentage of Hashimoto’s patients spontaneously recover proper thyroid function, I haven’t been thus far so lucky. Since then we keep tweaking the dosage to keep TSH well under 3, and the dosage to do that has over time increased. Now it’s 225 mcg/da, about double where it first stabilized. To the best of my knowledge I have no other autoimmune conditions and as long as I take the levothyroxine I’m entirely symptom free. (A while back I felt a bit tired and learned that the TSH had in 6 months jumped to 10, but that was quickly addressed.) While I dislike the need for a chronic med, it’s been pretty trivial to deal with after I started the levothyroxine.
My point is that properly managed, uncomplicated Hashimoto’s is at worst background noise. I was lucky in that straight T4 worked adequately. My hope is that you have no complicating factors and that it will work out the same way for you.
My only empirical advice is to get a short thyroid panel at least every six months once your dosage stabilizes things. It surprised me how with no other changes in life, activity, health, etc., a couple of times within 3-4 months suddenly there was a significant shift requiring a dosage change.
It sounds as if you aren’t experiencing difficulties with your MD’s at this point. Mine have been fine apart from the initial foot dragging, but late in her life my Mom developed Hashimoto’s, too. Her MD was impossible to reason with and undermedicated her. Other MD’s who periodically substituted for him at my request evaluated and made changes in the right general direction based on the same lab data, though I wonder if much of Mom’s ongoing fatigue could have been avoided with a bit more.
I think it’s critical for everyone to take charge of managing their situation and not be intimidated into suffering avoidable discomfort because any particular medical practitioner thinks that what they’re doing should be adequate. If you’re still symptomatic, it isn’t. There are lots of docs out there, and while the management of the vast complexities of endocrine conditions in many cases is beyond their knowledge, referring a patient to an endocrinologist appears to abrade their egos.
